The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

Informatics Education Report in Europe – they get it!

A joint report of Informatics Europe and the ACM Europe Working Group on Informatics Education was recently released. The report highlights what is currently being done well and what needs to be changed. Namely, the European schools are generally teaching digital literacy, but not informatics. This is inline with what is currently going on in K-12 schools throughout the United States as well – US students are learning digital literacy – how to use a computer, write documents, etc., but students are not learning computer science – how to be creators of the technology.

The European Report lays out the issues in a clear, succinct way and provides suggestions on how to make the changes needed for their citizenry. You can read the entire report here.

The United States is currently working on the problem through the National Science Foundation, ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association, through the development of curriculum and teacher training. However, the problem is confounded in the United States because unlike in Europe, education is a local issue, with local districts setting their own priorities. To read more about what is going on around K-12 Computer Science Education in the US, please visit the CS Principles website.